UDAAN
UDAAN
Udaan, which means “taking flight,” is a child labor prevention initiative of YouCanFreeUs created to serve children at risk of being trafficked or forced into child labor. Our first child development center is located in the slums of Bhiwandi, India. Many children in this area work in garbage dumps, looking for plastic and metal items to sell for less than 50 cents a day. These toxic and hazardous conditions pose grave challenges to their health and development.
Our center has a learning-friendly environment with a play area for warm-up exercises and fun activities and a dining area for the children to have two nutritious meals daily. Each child in Udaan receives a quality education and mentorship in a safe, beautiful facility with trained staff. We also have a dedicated building that imparts employable life skills to the children, and our staff team conducts regular workshops for parents in the community on topics such as health and hygiene, parenting, and literacy.
Our second child development center was recently opened.
number of children in udaan
CHILDREN
COMMUNITY SKILLS DEVELOPMENT
WOMEN
FACILITIES
UDAAN EARLY LEARNING CENTERS
LIFE SKILLS KNOWLEDGE CENTERS
CONSIDER SPONSORING A CHILD TODAY
LET'S GIVE THEM WINGS TO FLY!
A Note to Our Sponsors
Udaan is a project aimed at mainstreaming children who have never had an education or dropped out of school at a very early age. Our goal is to work with them for one to two years and then transition them into vocational training or regular education.
If you are a sponsor, please note there are times a child may drop out of the program because of the following reasons.
- These are migrant communities, and sometimes a family decides to go back to their village.
- Parents do not always see the value in education, although our constant goal is to mentor the parents so they become involved in their child’s future.
- A child may drop out of the program if they mainstream into regular school or a vocational program.
If your sponsored child drops out of Udaan, we will inform you, and you may transfer your sponsorship to another child.
The Udaan sponsorship model is unique from other sponsorship models because of the nature of the communities where we are located.